1 p.m. It'll be cold tonight

Get ready for some colder weather at night in Monmouth and Ocean counties, according to the National Weather Service.

While highs in the 50s are expected through Wednesday, lows in low 30s to low 40s are also expected, depending on the location, according to the weather service’s Mount Holly office.

Today’s forecast calls for highs in the mid-50s in both counties, with isolated showers in Western Monmouth and mostly cloudy skies elsewhere, according to the weather service.

Lows of around 40 to the low 40s were expected tonight.

Friday’s forecast calls for partly sunny or mostly cloudy skies, with highs in the low- to mid-50s and lows in the upper 30s to low 40s, according to the weather service.

6:45 a.m. Today’s weather

Today will be cloudy with scattered showers and highs in the upper 40s.

There’s a 50 percent chance of rain, according to the National Weather Service.

Tomorrow will be cloudy, with highs in the upper 40s.

Saturday will be partly sunny and Sunday will be sunny, with highs in the mid-40s, the weather service said.

Monday and Tuesday will be sunny and Wednesday will be mostly sunny, with highs in the 40s.

9:42 p.m. On top of everything else, it's going to get cold

“If Jersey Shore residents without power thought this week was cold, they are in for painful news. The National Weather Service predicts the week will grow progressively colder.

With temperatures Wednesday night in the mid 40s, temperatures were expected to drop into the high 30s throughout the region overnight.

Thursday will bring scattered showers to the Shore, with highs in the upper 40s during the day and lows heading into the mid 30s Thursday night.

The service predicts Friday will be even colder, with temperatures remaining in the 30s. Weekend temperatures will likely continue to chill until reaching the high 20s on Saturday.”

1:20 p.m. Water in NY Harbor hits heights not seen since 1821

Preliminary calculations of the maximum storm surge from Sandy show water hit heights in New York Harbor perhaps not seen since the great Cape May hurricane of 1821.

(Page 2 of 2)

Surges reached 13.31 feet at Sandy Hook, 13.88 at the Battery in lower Manhattan, and 14.6 feet at Bergen Point, said Gary Szatkowski of the National Weather Service bureau in Mount Holly.

The Sandy Hook levels might have been even higher as the gauge stopped working, Szatkowski said, adding meteorologists hope to recover that data when they check the tide gauge station.

Weather historians have estimated the 1821 hurricane raised a 13-foot surge in the harbor, based on contemporary reports of ships damaged in the harbor and flooding in lower Manhattan. Like Sandy, the 1821 storm inflicted its heaviest damage and highest surge in its northeast quandrant.

12:55 p.m. Sandy shatters records

Sandy shattered the record for a storm tide along the northern New Jersey coast, according to David A. Robinson, the New Jersey state climatologist at Rutgers University.

Sandy also broke the low pressure record at nearly every weather station in New Jersey, dropping to close to 28 inches, Robinson said Tuesday night. The previous record was 28.36 inches on March 6, 1932, in Long Branch, he said.

“We just shattered records with this storm,” he said. “The only thing that was positive about this storm is that the central and northern part of the state did not get rains nearly heavy enough to flood the Raritan and Passaic (river) basins. That’s the only thing where this was better than (Tropical Storm) Irene.

Sandy’s impact along the coast ranks with that of the March 1962 nor’easter and the 1944 hurricane, he said.

“I think when all is said and done, it may be the worst coastal storm on record in New Jersey,” he said.

Sandy didn’t last as long as the March ’62 storm, which featured “a long period of filling up the back bays, so it was kind of a quieter inundation,” he said.

Sandy was “a ferocious inundation, with much higher tides at one given time and much stronger winds,” he said. “So I think they’re going to find devastation equal to what’s ever been seen along the Shore before.”

When it comes to wind, Sandy also bested the March 2010 storm, the December 1992 nor’easter and Tropical Storm David in 1979, according to Robinson.

Sandy, which transitioned from a hurricane to a massive nor’easter, was “essentially an unprecedented event,” he said.